CeBit: Recession Cuts Out Riff-Raff

Everyone knew this year’s CeBit would be smaller than previous years. However, recent numbers suggest that rather than cut numbers in general, the recession has merely trimmed the fat off CeBit attendance.

Citing organizers, PCWorld reports that the fair saw a near 20 percent drop in visitors for 2009, but also says that those who did turn up to the six-day event in Hanover were, on average, a higher quality of attendee than in the past.

Organizers of the show said that nearly 1,000 exhibitors pulled out of CeBit 2009 in the last quarter of 2008. It also announced that next year’s show will be one day shorter and end on a Saturday, a change made at the request of many exhibiting companies at the show who say it is easier to travel on the weekend before a new work week starts.

A technology tradeshow is supposed to be for companies and businesses to interact with each other. "Hey, you got a new mini-ITX motherboard coming out? That's great, I'm planning a new HTPC that would go perfect with it!" Let anyone else who wants to see "cool new stuff" watch the news. Hell, G4 pretty much spent the week at CES didn't they?

Perfect example is E3. Most attendees to E3 were just gamers wanting to show off to their friends "hey, guess what, I went to E3 this year". Unfortunately E3 realized that too late and collapsed when they started filtering out the riff raff. At that point, ticket-sales, not vendor fees, were driving the trade show.